One exhibit case includes medical kits and images from hospital ships.
Micaela Sullivan-Fowler believes that everything is connected. With a scholar’s acumen, she brings that worldview to Staggering Losses: World War I and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, an artfully constructed historical exhibition at the Ebling Library, located in UW-Madison’s Health Sciences Learning Center, where she serves as its historian and curator.
Staggering Losses illustrates, in part, how wartime loss and suffering contributed to advances in modern medicine. While the exhibition commemorates the 100-year anniversary of World War I, it also examines how the war exacerbated the effects of the influenza virus.
“War casualties were in the tens of millions,” says Sullivan-Fowler. “Then in 1918, the rampant influenza virus, spread initially by infected soldiers, affected over 500 million military and civilians worldwide, resulting in approximately 50-100 million flu related deaths.”
Using the library’s extensive rare books and special collections, its early 20th century clinical and nursing journals, books on military medicine, postcards and photos, Sullivan-Fowler builds relationships between topics and storylines. Images and vintage medical artifacts show medical technology and treatments that advanced healthcare: X-ray machines on battlefields, antiseptics and wound treatments, and evolving reconstructive surgery techniques. She also forges connections between soldiers, doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, animals — horses, mules and dogs — and community members overseas and at home. The catalyst for this research was her curiosity about two compelling memories.
“I wanted to know what it meant to have been ‘gassed’ in World War I, the way my husband’s grandfather had been,” says Sullivan-Fowler. “And, an elderly historian I knew mentioned stepping over bodies on the sidewalks of Boston in the fall of 1918. I wanted to know how accurate those scenarios were.”
Another display includes artifacts and images of Native American, Latino and African American soldiers and practitioners who fought or served on behalf of the U.S., including Urbane Bass, M.D. (upper right) who cared for the black troops in France, and was killed by shell fire while attending to a wounded soldier.
In the past 10 years Sullivan-Fowler has done a number of installations that celebrate Ebling’s Rare Books & Special Collections, including “Informed Consent: Unwitting Subjects in Medicine’s Pursuit of Beneficial Knowledge.” Before filling 13 glass cases with her discoveries for this exhibition, Sullivan-Fowler assembled and examined the materials as if she were meticulously arranging a closet, a technique she uses with all of her exhibitions.
“I hoped to make some sense of the tens of millions that died or were wounded in the war, and those who were sickened or died in the pandemic,” she explains. “I envisioned a linear coat rack with hooks. Each hook represented a theme: trench warfare, ambulance transport, nurses, flu in Wisconsin.” As she gathered the documents and artifacts, she began to “see relationships between all the parts,” says Sullivan-Fowler.
Staggering Losses serves to humanize “the magnitude of loss of intellectual and creative opportunities of hundreds of thousands of people,” says Sullivan-Fowler.
These losses went beyond the individual, adds Sullivan-Fowler, to “subsequent lost opportunities for improved race relations and the place of women in the political and economic arena.” She notes that black soldiers and medical staff who served alongside whites experienced discrimination and lynchings when they got home.
Staggering Losses isn’t an easy walk through wartime history and its heroes. Visitors are asked to confront the truth about the physical, mental and social scars of war. It’s a stark reminder that “the war to end all wars” did not end all wars — and that treatments used today come to us with a history of pain, suffering and experimentation. Sullivan-Fowler honors the heroic people and animals who gave their lives.
“A war benefits medicine more than it benefits anybody else,” said Mary Merritt Crawford, a World War I doctor who is quoted in the exhibit. “It’s terrible, of course, but it does.”
Staggering Losses runs through Jan. 31, 2020 at the Ebling Library (750 Highland Ave.) Hours: Mon.-Thursday: 8 a.m.-7 p.m.; Fri. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed to the public on evenings and weekends.
To arrange a tour, contact Micaela.Sullivan-Fowler@wisc.edu.
